Prevailing wages inflate costs

Dick Hagerty's Jan. 15 column brings up an excellent point regarding the cost of publicly funded housing. He raises a salient point that housing authority folks give one reason for the high construction costs as "we have to pay prevailing wages."

He raises a salient point that housing authority folks give one reason for the high construction costs as "we have to pay prevailing wages."

A simple solution would be that when allocating money to local cities through the Housing Authority of Stanislaus County, the funds go to cities that are charter cities, which then can exempt the projects from state prevailing wages rates, and instead pay workers a real local wage, not the bloated San Francisco union wages that are the basis of so-called prevailing wages.